Monday, April 02, 2018

In a year when American culture seems to be dissolving before our very eyes in the shadow of a political discourse that often seems as turbid as it is abhorrent, there’s always baseball.

I grew up the daughter of a man who loved baseball; over the years my Mom learned to enjoy it just as much. My dad played it, listened to it, watched it, collected cards of players he admired. I can’t even pinpoint my first baseball experience, such is the way the entirety of the game enveloped around and melded into my childhood memories.

I grew up in Minnesota and thus cheered ardently for the Twins. I don’t hear about them much anymore; they haven’t had too many consecutive stellar seasons as of late, but they won the World Series twice when I was a kid—1987 and 1991—and we watched home games at the Metrodome (a huge dome with a cover that was not retractable because, hello, Minnesota). Before my brother was born, the three of us went to games—my Dad reminded me we could buy tickets in left field for $5 and we’d bring in our own bags of peanuts (in the shells of course!) and peanut M & M’s.

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But what makes such use appropriate is that, upon getting information from, say, a terrorist, a mafia murderer, a swindler, a jilted lover, or a political opponent with a powerful motive to smear the suspect, the prosecutor does not use it to seek court process until the FBI has independently verified it.

Emphasis in the original.

McCarthy is flat wrong.

(Is he being deceitfully tricky with language by using the word "prosecutor," or with his vague term "court process"? Usually it's not a prosecutor applying for a warrant but a law enforcement officer. Granted in the FISA case prosecutors at the DOJ are involved (along with law enforcement) but I don't see why that would change anything.)

(Is he being deceitfully tricky with language by using the word "prosecutor," or in his vague term "court process"? Usually it's not a prosecutor applying for a warrant but a law enforcement officer. Granted in the FISA case prosecutors at the DOJ are involved but I don't see why that would change anything.)

McCarthy prosecuted cases for 20 years.

Which is why I was being too charitable. He's actually just lying.

He points out that, absent meaningful independent confirmation of the Steele dossier, no warrant should have been given.

I don't agree with that either, but it's a different claim from the one he made that you quoted:

"But what makes such use appropriate is that, upon getting information from, say, a terrorist, a mafia murderer, a swindler, a jilted lover, or a political opponent with a powerful motive to smear the suspect, the prosecutor does not use it to seek court process until the FBI has independently verified it."

There he's talking not about whether a warrant should have been granted but whether it should have been sought in the first place.

There he's talking not about whether a warrant should have been granted but whether it should have been sought in the first place.

Well, sure -- the abuse of power is seeking the warrant in the first place for the purposes for which it was sought. It probably shouldn't have been granted, either, but the FISA court likely bends over backwards to be cooperative. Indeed, taking the investigation to that court in the first place was an abuse of power and process, and they did so because they knew it was a star chamber-ish court. Apparently it doesn't even make transcripts of warrant hearings, which is absurd.

The "counterintelligence" investigation was not bona fide in any serious way. The proof of that is that if DTJr would have gone to the FBI with the meeting seek by Nutty Kremlin Lawyer, he himself would have been put under investigation -- just as Papa was with similar information.(*) Indeed, maybe that was Nutty Kremlin Lawyer's play, together with Fusion, who she knew well.

(*) "The Russians have dirt on Hillary, thanks for telling us, now we're going to slap an investigation on you" is no sane person's idea of bona fide.

Tsk. Hadn't really checked in awhile, but I think I was hoping for the dollar to be somewhat less crappy against the GBP at the time of our trip.

You should have scheduled the trip for the post-Brexit vote crash.

It was always going to bounce back somewhat after bottoming out after the crisis. That is just the way those things go. $1.40 per pound is still pretty low though. It has been over 1.50 much more than not, at least in my lifetime. So you are probably still getting a relative bargain.

Yeah, I know, it's a pretty weak complaint. We made all the travel plans prior to any house buying/selling events, and it was definitely better in October. We moved in last week and are painfully aware of every cent being spent for the new few decades.

Jeremy Corbyn faces a damaging new anti-semitism scandal as a bombshell dossier reveals the full extent of anti-Jewish, violent and abusive comments on Facebook groups mobilising his most fervent supporters.

Twelve senior staff working for the Labour leader and the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, are members of groups containing anti-semitic and violent comments, including praise for Adolf Hitler and threats to kill Theresa May, the prime minister.

The most comprehensive investigation conducted into 20 of the biggest pro-Corbyn Facebook groups — numbering 400,000 members — found routine attacks on Jewish people, including Holocaust denial.

The dossier was compiled over two months by whistleblowers working with The Sunday Times in the groups, who gained access to restricted membership groups. They uncovered more than 2,000 racist, anti-semitic, misogynistic, violent and abusive messages.

Lord Carlile, the former independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, said the comments appeared to breach hate-crime laws.

The investigation found:

■ Posts including support for Adolf Hitler, with one saying the Nazi leader “should have finished off the job” and another claiming the deaths of 6m Jews in the Holocaust “was a big lie!”

■ A Labour supporter, Patrick Haseldine, who posted an image of the Israeli flag on one Labour group on Facebook, with the swastika replacing the Star of David

■ Ian Love, a Momentum organiser on one of the groups, who claimed the former prime minister Tony Blair was “Jewish to the core”, and told The Sunday Times last week he believed the Rothschild banking family controlled most of the world’s finances.

The Facebook groups — which include We Support Jeremy Corbyn, with 68,000 members — have played a key role in helping Corbyn win two leadership contests and boost his performance in the last general election. He is under strong pressure to confront the anti-semitism in his party.

The abusive messages regularly targeted Jewish public figures, including the Labour MP Luciana Berger and Jonathan Arkush, president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews. There are also many violent threats against politicians.

Berger said she and her staff had gone to police about the abuse they had received from left-wingers, including one email urging her to kill herself. In an article for The Sunday Times, Berger says: “Where people indulge in illegal racist activity I will always use the full force of the law to pursue a prosecution. I will continue to do that even when they are people from the left.”

Last night, Christine Shawcroft resigned from Labour’s national executive committee (NEC) following pressure from Tom Watson, the deputy leader. She had opposed the suspension of a Labour member accused of Holocaust denial. “It is clear that my continued membership of the NEC has become a distraction for the party,” said Shawcroft, who will be replaced by the comedian Eddie Izzard.

David Prescott, Corbyn’s senior political adviser, was a member of We Support Jeremy Corbyn, the biggest group, until last week; Laura Murray, a stakeholder manager in Corbyn’s office, is a member of Supporting Jeremy Corbyn & John McDonnell; and James Meadway, McDonnell’s economic adviser, is in the groups We Support Jeremy Corbyn and Supporting Jeremy Corbyn & John McDonnell. Labour said no one in Corbyn’s or McDonnell’s office had seen, posted or endorsed anti- semitic or abusive messages.

Some posts decry the lack of availability of “assassins” in Britain for “getting rid of politicians”, with a picture featuring May. Another post, about the former deputy prime minister Damian Green, says “why don’t we just don’t get on with it and lynch him”.

So FancyPants, which party will get your vote in the next election...?

Not good, but then you must be absolutely beside yourself at the turn the American conservative movement has taken over the last few years, culminating in a Republican President supported by public anti-semites. Gotta think you're using your political capital within the party to try and root out this toxic element.

How senior are the Corbyn staff members who are members of these groups? Have they made any disturbing comments themselves?

Well, sure -- the abuse of power is seeking the warrant in the first place for the purposes for which it was sought.

That's fine but folks like McCarthy don't have to lie and cloud issue by pretending that the dossier needed to be verified before being included in a warrant request. That makes no sense. The entire point of a search warrant is to investigate whether certain criminal allegations are true.

The premise is flawed: a warrant is likely to be granted with unverified information. It's done all the time.

Yes, if the informant is known and vouched for. Here the informant was not Steele, but the unnamed Russians. If I go down to the police station and say, "Bob Smith just told me that George Jones told him that Mike Johnson up the street just killed someone," no judge should grant a search warrant for Johnson's house based just on that.

That's fine but folks like McCarthy don't have to lie and cloud issue by pretending that the dossier needed to be verified before being included in a warrant request. That makes no sense. The entire point of a search warrant is to investigate whether certain criminal allegations are true.

It's kind of hard for me to compare a drama to what's essentially a comedy, but I can't see either of those films being particularly "authentic" or "inauthentic". All I can say is that Symphony of Six Million stirred my emotions, while The Heart of New York made me laugh at times, but the movie as a whole didn't really grab me. A few years later there was a much more overtly political drama in the same setting, One Third of a Nation, with Sylvia Sidney (The Proletarian Princess) and Leif Erikson, which is somewhat didactic but still a very good snapshot into the political mood of the moment in New York's tenement district. But as you say, in all of these films it's largely going to come down to personal taste.

Jolly Old, I can't shake off a forbidding suspicion that you think Uncle Tom's Cabin is superior as literature to Huck Finn.

No, there's nothing in the law that requires that and indeed warrants are sought and granted based on random "informants" all the time. (There's no need to imbue this with a heightened term such as "informants." They're people who may be witnesses or may otherwise know something.)

Here the informant was not Steele.

How you classify Steele vs Steele's sources as "informants" is irrelevant.

If I go down to the police station and say, "Bob Smith just told me that George Jones told him that Mike Johnson up the street just killed someone," no judge should grant a search warrant for Johnson's house.

Why not? Of course the judge should and would. (Assuming no facts cut against that, and we may need more specific information, but it doesn't turn on the hearsay issue.)

Hearsay applies to whether evidence is admissible at trial, not to search warrants per se. (Yes, a judge may find a connection too tenuous to grant a search warrant, but that's just a function of whether the judge thinks the probable cause standard has been met; it doesn't turn on hearsay per se.)

Because my information is woefully insufficient, standing alone, to constitute probable cause. Think about it -- under your scenario, anyone could just walk into a police station and get a search warrant slapped on someone else. That isn't the standard.

How you classify Steele vs Steele's sources as "informants" is irrelevant.

It's entirely relevant. The informants have to have a degree of established reliability. Hard for that to be the case when you don't even know who they are.

Beijing says the new sanctions on 128 US products, which it first proposed 10 days ago, are in response to President Donald Trump's tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum from China and some other countries.

But Trump also has more measures in the works aimed specifically at China. He has announced plans to slap tariffs on about $50 billion worth of Chinese goods following an investigation by his administration into the theft of intellectual property from US companies.

The administration has said those tariffs will punish the Chinese aerospace, technology and machinery industries, but it hasn't announced which specific products will be hit.

But the staffers who shared the documents with CNN say the promos are inappropriate -- yet another corporate infringement on local journalism.

"At my station, everyone was uncomfortable doing it," a local anchor said. The person insisted on anonymity because they believed they would be fired for speaking out.

Other local anchors also said the promos were a source of dismay in their newsrooms.

As scripted, the promos decry "fake stories" from national news outlets -- echoing President Trump's inflammatory rhetoric about "fake news."

The promos are supposed to start airing on local stations later this month. The instructions sent to station news directors say that the 60- and 75-second spots should run frequently "to create maximum reach and frequency."

But sure, I am positive it is all the fault of the liberal media and Democrats in general.

Morty, thanks for the link on the Hardest Course in the Humanities. I was a college student in the 21st century, and I absolutely would've taken a course like this, as would many of my classmates. I went to a liberal arts school and was an English major but my school didn't offer much in the way of big, bedrock canon surveys. It was known as a place with good teachers and classes were more likely to explore smaller topics or idiosyncratic interests of professors and there was much more emphasis on formulating personal responses to literature than there was to just learning the ####### basics. I think a required survey would have been very good ... I suspect that if you quizzed my English major classmates on things like "What century did Shakespeare live in" or "What is Victorian literature" we would have done quite poorly, even if most of us could have close read the crap out of any one poem or paragraph.

There was one required upperclassman seminar in the "Literary Studies" program (which only had 12 or so majors in a year) that was basically just the ALL THE BIG BOOKS class. Odyssey, Inferno, Paradise Lost, Ulysses, etc. Seems pretty intense for one semester but it would have been a fun mountain to climb.

Hey, BDC, How would Auden's syllabus have fared at your university today?

I dunno. I began this semester with Dante; we went on to Petrarch, Boccaccio, Tasso, etc. Today was Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author. I have played clips from operas nearly every morning. (It's a course on Italian literature, evidently.)

There are lots of dynamics explored in the article you link to, the Auden course and the Oklahoma rendition of it, and in the comments. One is the sheer amount of reading – I doubt there's as much reading in my syllabus as in Auden's, and I don't know whether the Oklahoma folks are teaching entire works or excerpts. I'm almost going to bet the latter, because reading all of every work they list would have been a staggering amount of reading for me as a grad student at an Ivy League university in 1979. WH Auden, if he was really expecting his Michigan undergraduates to read all of all of those books in 1941, was probably dealing with a tiny handful of people who were financially independent and already headed for teaching or other literary careers, or perhaps just for trust-fund lives. If I expected everybody to read everything listed by either Auden or Oklahoma in full, I'd have maybe one or two people pass my course every three years. (And "That's the way it should be!" I hear people cry. But let's get real, even for 1941 or 1979.)

There's also the issue (from the comments) of whether people will take such a course if they're already lit majors, or whether they'll take lit electives, or whether they'll major in literature. These are all slightly different issues. Some people think that any course involving reading and writing is too hard, and that's been true since colleges were founded. But if you're already an English major … I get about the same enrollments in courses where I do Dante or Milton as I do in any others. There's always somebody (like PreservedFish!) who wants something distinctive, as they're apparently seeing at Oklahoma.

As to the culture-wars aspect that the first comment on that page was trolling after: well, nobody's too exercised about that in Arlington, Texas, and I doubt they're much concerned in Norman, Oklahoma. Maybe at Reed or Oberlin, who knows. As several commenters said, you can always read Dante in one course and Danticat in another. Or you can read Dante via queer theory. Or you can take a line I sometimes take, which is that if it's valuable to read things from other cultures, it must be valuable for everybody to read medieval Italian literature, since medieval Italians are an extremely underrepresented group in our student bodies :)

Sorry, but [Ingraham's] still trailer trash. She said what she said about Mexicans, and nobody but a racist would make comments like that.

How many Latin American children have you adopted, Andy?

And how many times has that trailer trash cheered on Trump while he made one move after another against other Latin American children and their parents?

Sorry, but while she's a loudmouth with objectionable views, calling her "racist" against brown people is ridiculous.

Sorry, but the clearly racist sentiments behind Ingraham's words ("Well, they have come here. They have. Yeah, they have come here to murder and rape our people. We know that.") speak for themselves. Your denial of the obvious here is in line with your refusal to speak the truth about Trump.

But not to worry: When Fox News decides to hire a sports commentator, you'll still be eligible for the job.

When I studied abroad for a year in the UK I was surprised by how different the emphases were. Professors there did not want students to formulate personal responses, they wanted them to go to the library and synthesize professional criticisms. In lecture classes, this did not go well for me. You'd receive a reading list, none of which was required, all of which was suggested, and exam questions might well draw upon some of those suggested works. The lectures might be wholly irrelevant, in fact, and they were often delivered by specialists who had no idea what we had covered last week or what we would cover next week. But in the couple literature seminars I took, I was much better equipped than my local classmates to contribute and analyze extemporaneously, and my less bibliography-heavy writing style was well-received.

Because my information is woefully insufficient, standing alone, to constitute probable cause. Think about it -- under your scenario, anyone could just walk into a police station and get a search warrant slapped on someone else. That isn't the standard.

They actually don't even need a warrant. Exigent circumstances would apply.

Your hypo was "If I go down to the police station and say, 'Bob Smith just told me that George Jones told him that Mike Johnson up the street just killed someone.'"

No warrant needed. Mike Johnson could be in the middle of a killing spree. In this case the cops don't even bother with a warrant and simply go full regalia sirens blaring to Mike Johnson's house, and enter guns drawn, and search. All permitted under 4th Amendment jurisprudence.

No warrant needed. Mike Johnson could be in the middle of a killing spree. In this case the cops don't even bother with a warrant and simply go full regalia sirens blaring to Mike Johnson's house, and enter guns drawn, and search. All permitted under 4th Amendment jurisprudence.

Unlikely, but a better hypo for these purposes would be to change "just killed someone" -- my bad -- to "is dealing drugs." Take all possibilities of exigent circumstances out of the picture.

Sorry, but the clearly racist sentiments behind Ingraham's words ("Well, they have come here. They have. Yeah, they have come here to murder and rape our people. We know that.") speak for themselves. Your denial of the obvious here is in line with your refusal to speak the truth about Trump.

Andy's rantings are quite redolent of King Lear's. Substance-free screaming at clouds.

You're dealing with people here who think anything bad said about a "brown person" is racist. There's no reasoning with it, because what they're saying isn't animated by reason. The more interesting question is when it will pass, if ever, and how things came to be this way. I'm still partial to the theory that they got used to attributing everything bad said about Obama to racism and have simply never let up on that way of thinking. Needs more thought, though.

I've never read a word of Trollope (except for his amusing titles). The problem is that in high school I had a long-term substitute that was weirdly obsessed with Trollope. He could relate every subject to Trollope. This guy was a major dork and if kind of poisoned Trollope for me.

When I studied abroad for a year in the UK I was surprised by how different the emphases were. Professors there did not want students to formulate personal responses, they wanted them to go to the library and synthesize professional criticisms. In lecture classes, this did not go well for me. You'd receive a reading list, none of which was required, all of which was suggested, and exam questions might well draw upon some of those suggested works. The lectures might be wholly irrelevant, in fact, and they were often delivered by specialists who had no idea what we had covered last week or what we would cover next week. But in the couple literature seminars I took, I was much better equipped than my local classmates to contribute and analyze extemporaneously, and my less bibliography-heavy writing style was well-received.

As an undergraduate in English class, we had a guest lecturer from England (I forget which university) who was shocked that in American universities you could get a degree with a major in English and only have to take something like 40 hours or so of English courses out of 130 needed to graduate. I think he said in England it would be like 70 hours (or maybe that was 70%--it was long ago). But, the difference was really striking.

The baseline of the illegal immigration issue seems simple to me. We, like all nations, are entitled to know who is here legally and who is here illegally. That's what the census issue is about (and the funding issue). We're allowed to control our border; prevent people from coming in illegally; set legal immigration and refugee levels; decide if people within our borders are eligible for legal status. All of that seems fairly standard and innocuous.

The DEPORTATION issue should be the only controversial issue. And I'd just leave non-felon illegal aliens be. But we should know how much of a drain on government resources they are. I guess I don't see why the left fetishizes and deifies illegal aliens, but whatever.

Quote from Mike August, circa 2010: "Mexico will take back California without a shot being fired."

Unrelated to Ingraham, about whose life I know nothing, but – one generic response would be that people are complicated. Attitudes, theories, remarks, policies, and emotions are not just on-off switches that align perfectly.

I have paid no attention to Ingraham and know nothing about her other than the second-hand Hogg tale here and in all the ensuing headlines (if it hadn't come up in relation to Hogg, I'd have had no idea she was the "shut up and dribble" lady); but it only takes about five seconds of thinking to formulate how saving this child from her people could possibly work into that sentiment.

Sorry, but the clearly racist sentiments behind Ingraham's words ("Well, they have come here. They have. Yeah, they have come here to murder and rape our people. We know that.") speak for themselves. Your denial of the obvious here is in line with your refusal to speak the truth about Trump.

Why would someone bearing hatred for brown people adopt a brown baby?

Obviously not all racists hate all people of a different color or ethnicity. You could probably populate several large states with racists who have a black or Latino friend or two. And non-racists don't go around making the sort of comments that Ingraham and Trump do about Mexicans. All you're doing here is just struggling to lift yourself out of a giant lake of quicksand.

Seriously, this is so stupid. It's the next step up from "I can't be racist because I have a black friend". I don't know why it's so hard for people like Jason to differentiate between prejudice towards a group and feelings for particular individuals within that group. My sister's in-laws are Southern Baptists, with all the anti-gay bigotry that entails. But my sister is also involved in musical theater and has many gay friends. The in-laws don't hate the gay friends, and welcome them into their home, but that doesn't mean they feel they should have equal rights or anything. I mean, Jason obviously hates Muslims (seeing as how he wants to bomb tens of millions of them), but presumably he's met A Muslim person that he does not want to bomb (Grover Norquist's wife, maybe?). That doesn't make him any less bloodthirsty when it comes to wiping 3/4 of the Middle East off the map.

I just looked up the Trollope scholar. According to his bio his signature achievement was editing a version of one of Trollope's novels. He utilized an unpublished manuscript in order to increase the original length by 200 pages. Oooof.

I mean, Jason obviously hates Muslims (seeing as how he wants to bomb tens of millions of them), but presumably he's met A Muslim person that he does not want to bomb (Grover Norquist's wife, maybe?). That doesn't make him any less bloodthirsty when it comes to wiping 3/4 of the Middle East off the map.

Or more precisely, he doesn't hate "Muslims", but he has no problem making sweeping generalizations about their proclivities towards terrorism that effectively strips them of their collective humanity. This is exactly what the Trumps and the Ingrahams do about both Mexicans and Muslims.

I guess I don't see why the left fetishizes and deifies illegal aliens

You just can't help yourself.

Oh, he's absolutely right. Not just illegal aliens, but Muslims/Islam, and several other examples of fetishization.

The funny -- read: weird and kind of pathetic -- thing about the whole snapper dustup, which I didn't comment on in real time, isn't just that the modern left is so anti-Catholic, but that their anti-Catholicism isn't based in secularism. If it was, we wouldn't see the bizarre warm embrace by the modern left of Muslims and Islam. If snapper were a Muslim and came on here and started advocating Islamic-based religious policy prescriptions, they wouldn't act anything like they way they act towards him.

No, when it comes to political Catholicism, it's "let's drive him off the board." When it's political Islam, it's "don't you dare even use the word Islamist, there's no such thing."

Or more precisely, he doesn't hate "Muslims", but he has no problem making sweeping generalizations about their proclivities towards terrorism that effectively strips them of their collective humanity.

I imagine if your friends/family in Israel lived under the threat of constant attack you'd develop some generalizations about proclivities also. I personally wouldn't, because I'm a robot, and better than everyone else.

Do Muslims make sweeping generalizations about the proclivities of Jews?

Obviously not all racists hate all people of a different color or ethnicity. You could probably populate several large states with racists who have a black or Latino friend or two. And non-racists don't go around making the sort of comments that Ingraham and Trump do about Mexicans. All you're doing here is just struggling to lift yourself out of a giant lake of quicksand.

This isn't about having a friend of a different race, Andy. An adult wouldn't take responsibility for the life of a brown baby if he/she were racist.

I know little about Laura Ingram, and nothing about her baby, but there are white Guatemalans. I have a neighbor who is one.

I mean, Jason obviously hates Muslims (seeing as how he wants to bomb tens of millions of them), but presumably he's met A Muslim person that he does not want to bomb (Grover Norquist's wife, maybe?). That doesn't make him any less bloodthirsty when it comes to wiping 3/4 of the Middle East off the map.

I wish you folks would make up your minds. I'm a tool of the Turks. I'm a tool of the Saudis. I'm a tool of the Emiratis. Now I want them all dead?

Also, where do you live? Give me a few minutes to finish lunch and then I'll call in an airstrike.

“The failure of President Trump and Democratic lawmakers to strike a deal on young undocumented immigrants puts the divisive issue into the middle of some hotly contested campaigns for November’s midterm elections — ones which could tip control of Congress,” Bloomberg reports.

“A sizable majority of Americans, especially Democrats and independents, support giving legal status to Dreamers, opinion polls have shown. The topic resonates especially in California, Arizona, Texas, Florida and Nevada — states with large Hispanic populations where Democrats are seeking to chip away at the Republican majorities in the House and Senate.”

A trade war here, sabotage ACA there, fail to act on issues (such as above) where majorities of Americans favor a solution ... everything is going great.

Or more precisely, he doesn't hate "Muslims", but he has no problem making sweeping generalizations about their proclivities towards terrorism that effectively strips them of their collective humanity. This is exactly what the Trumps and the Ingrahams do about both Mexicans and Muslims.

Do Muslims make sweeping generalizations about the proclivities of Jews?

Of course they do! There are lots of bad people in the world, not just Jason.

We all tend to categorize and then generalize from that categorization. It's part of that brain that sees patterns (which can be traits) and then deduces from that for purposes of perceived self-preservation.

Jolly Old does it with all the froth and fume (which has gotten worse since the humiliating Clinton defeat) wrt to those white southerners and those Republicans/right-wingers who run interference for them. He characterizes them in exactly the same way as those he accuses of racism. None of us are exempt from doing that. Some of us just play our cards closer to the chest.

Quote from Mike August, circa 2010: "Mexico will take back California without a shot being fired."

That's why there is such a backlash against illegal immigration here. Oh wait.

Er, that was a joke. Mike August works with Adam Carolla.

The dumb part if your calculus us that illegal immigrants are a net *benefit* to the economy. That's why they come here.

Mmmm.... A net benefit to the economy? Not so sure. Maybe. I'd need to see some studies on this.

Take one issue in CA: driving. Many illegal immigrants are driving without insurance. Without a license. Without registration. And when they're pulled over they're generally allowed to go on their way. If it were you and I the police would impound the vehicle and fine us heavily. But governments are after money. And there's no money in, say, impounding a clunker that the person isn't coming back to retrieve. So they don't impound it.

Another issue: A lot of illegal immigrants are doing side jobs, off the books. Construction work, for example. What do they do with the waste material and debris that they pull out of the house when they do a remod? They don't bring it to the dump or landfill, because the city charges a fee for that. So they drive it to a side street somewhere at night and dump it there, where it sits for many moons until the city gets around to collecting it.

Also, where do you live? Give me a few minutes to finish lunch and then I'll call in an airstrike.

My ward is 70% Hispanic, so you won't have to worry about it after Trump walls it off. Besides, your kind just likes to advocate killing mass numbers of other people. Your too chickenshit to volunteer for it.

Ray, the census issue isn't about counting who is here illegally or legally. That's not the purpose of the census and I don't think it's even the ostensible goal of the people who want to add a citizenship question.

As for your other points, I agree that we have a right to control who comes in and who doesn't and to know what percentage of people are illegal immigrants. I don't really think that is at issue (Dems are always willing to throw in money for "border security" as part of immigration deals because they just see it as a waste of a few billion dollars, not a betrayal of core values, and we wouldn't be Dems if we weren't ok with wasting a few billion dollars taken from David Nieperont at gun point).

But immigration is generally beneficial and illegal immigration has so far been generally beneficial to most groups (with possible exception of least educated white people, a group the GOP cares about in no other contexts). What you're missing is that there isn't really a rational debate now- the restrictionists, led by Trump, are afraid of white people becoming a minority and want to restrict both illegal and legal immigration without regard to economic benefits. It's not like they're doing a cost benefit analysis, Trump just lies repeatedly about how dangerous immigrants and refugees are because he is xenophobic and a bad person.

It is hardly a coincidence that so many greedy people have filled the administration’s ranks. Trump’s ostentatious crudeness and misogyny are a kind of human-resources strategy. Radiating personal and professional sleaze lets him quickly and easily identify individuals who have any kind of public ethics and to sort them out. (James Comey’s accounts of his interactions with the president depict Trump probing for some vein of corruptibility in the FBI director; when he came up empty, he fired him.) Trump is legitimately excellent at cultivating an inner circle unburdened by legal or moral scruples. These are the only kind of people who want to work for Trump, and the only kind Trump wants to work for him.

It should take very little work — and be a very big priority — for Democratic candidates to stitch all the administration’s misdeeds together into a tale of unchecked greed. For all the mystery still surrounding the Russia investigation, for instance, it is already clear that the narrative revolves around a lust (and desperation) for money. Having burned enough American banks throughout his career that he could not obtain capital through conventional, legitimate channels, Trump turned to Russian sources, who typically have an ulterior political motive. Just what these various sources got in return for their investment in Trump is a matter for Robert Mueller’s investigators to determine. But Trump’s interest in them is perfectly obvious.

Corruption does seem to be the defining characteristic of the GOP Trump administration.

Hey, BDC, How would Auden's syllabus have fared at your university today?

Interestingly the two profs most likely to deliver an Auden-like syllabus at our English Department are also by far the most popular, frequently rated the best profs on campus in the school paper.

They're notorious for their massive reading lists and rigorous evaluations. Of course, they're also notorious for being great teachers.

I think there is an element of truth in the article. Dumbing things down and creating "sexy" courses to attract students may not be the answer. They don't seem to have the same impact as excellent teaching...though I guess they are easier to produce.

Another issue: A lot of illegal immigrants are doing side jobs, off the books. Construction work, for example. What do they do with the waste material and debris that they pull out of the house when they do a remod? They don't bring it to the dump or landfill, because the city charges a fee for that. So they drive it to a side street somewhere at night and dump it there, where it sits for many moons until the city gets around to collecting it.

It could go no other way.

That reminds me of hearings that were held in Vermilion Parish, Louisiana in the '80s. Only with oil and gas waste. Service company trucks would drive around at night finding secluding spots to empty their payload.

But immigration is generally beneficial and illegal immigration has so far been generally beneficial to most groups (with possible exception of least educated white people, a group the GOP cares about in no other contexts).

Illegal immigration benefits the following groups of people:

* Illegal immigrants and their families.
* Employers who can save money by hiring people off the books without having to account to the government.
* Homeowners like David who can hire them to do his lawn, pool, and remod at a reduced rate than if he hired a tax paying business to do it.

I'm at a loss to see who else. Meanwhile for governments/taxpayers there are:

* Education costs. Which are massive.
* Health care costs. Which are massive.
* Loss of tax revenue from income taxes and general fines that the rest of us have to bear. Which is massive.

Not sure that adds up to a net benefit for tax payers. Far from it, would be my initial peg.

How do governments benefit financially? An individual illegal immigrant is barely making enough to support his family, even though he's largely off the books. Does the typical illegal immigrant family have, say, health insurance?

You can talk about compassion which is fine. I'm just talking about finances and resources here. To me it can't possibly add up to break even, let alone an economic benefit to the state.

Mmmm.... A net benefit to the economy? Not so sure. Maybe. I'd need to see some studies on this.

Other than the many many studies you have been pointed to over the years? Is this like the global warming studies which you never read and dismiss out of hand, you want more studies on a different subject to ignore? OK.

It's ... funny ... to note that the thought that ripping Snapper might cause lapsed or less-committed Catholics to become more devoted to the faith or more militant never even occurred to the usual suspects. Compare and contrast that with their admonitions to pretend and suck up to Muslims, lest we "engender more terrorists and terrorism."

Another issue: A lot of illegal immigrants are doing side jobs, off the books. Construction work, for example. What do they do with the waste material and debris that they pull out of the house when they do a remod? They don't bring it to the dump or landfill, because the city charges a fee for that. So they drive it to a side street somewhere at night and dump it there, where it sits for many moons until the city gets around to collecting it.

It could go no other way.

I mean, they could pay the fee; the could also (wrongly) put it into someone's else dumpster, or mix it in with the waste at a legit site. Also possible that they have a dumpster delivered under the homeowners name. Outside of tire dumping in Detroit, I've never run across stories about this.

* Loss of tax revenue from income taxes and general fines that the rest of us have to bear. Which is massive.

But they pay sales taxes! What about that? What about sales taxes, huh?!??!?!?!!

It's also ... funny ... how Andy (and others, but nowhere near to his degree) are always so on and on about "tax cheats" and the IRS cracking down and the like, when the biggest "tax cheat" by far is none other than The Noble Illegal Immigrant.

And how much of an English major's curriculum is devoted to courses in English in the UK compared to the USA. This is for BDC and Preserved Fish who have matriculated in both places.

I think I spent maybe 50% of my courses on literature, perhaps less. You were allowed to take literature courses in other departments (eg, a Dante course offered by the Italian department, or a Bible course in the Religion dept). There were requirements for math, science etc and plenty of room for foreign languages or whatever struck my fancy, like film.

Not sure about the UK, although I suspect it was a higher percentage. There seemed to be more specialization. When I was over there I took an Archaeology course, which I thought would be interesting. It was horrible, extraordinarily detailed and boring. In the US an Archaeology 101 course would be something that anyone could take on a lark. In the UK it was very seriously directed towards 19 year olds that wanted to become archaeologists.

Obviously not all racists hate all people of a different color or ethnicity. You could probably populate several large states with racists who have a black or Latino friend or two. And non-racists don't go around making the sort of comments that Ingraham and Trump do about Mexicans. All you're doing here is just struggling to lift yourself out of a giant lake of quicksand.

This isn't about having a friend of a different race, Andy. An adult wouldn't take responsibility for the life of a brown baby if he/she were racist.

If she's not a racist, why would she go around making racist comments?

I know little about Laura Ingram, and nothing about her baby, but there are white Guatemalans. I have a neighbor who is one.

A White Hispanic sighting! (ducks)

It shouldn't be all that hard to sight White Hispanics. According to the U.S. Census, there are about 37 million of them.

I was surprised when I was teaching in the UK at how specialized their degrees are. I don't think there were any non-history majors in my classes. And none of the students seemed to be taking anything but history classes. It seems to be much more focused there - if you're reading History that's what you focus on. In Canada (and the US I assume?), things are a lot more inter-disciplinary.

EDIT: To clarify, I don't think the distinction between the two national systems is limited to English. It seems like a more general divide between specialization vs. rounded education.

Sigh. What is the benefit for people having jobs to society? The big economic benefit is they produce value while working (their productivity) and they also take the money they earn and use it to buy goods and services. Money gets spent multiple times in an economy, it doesn't just go to the employee and stop.

You will note in the paragraph above there is no separation between the legality of who is doing the work. There are obviously differences in costs and benefits in other things as to the legality of the employee, of course, and I assure you reputable economists do all that. And we have linked to studies over the years showing the net benefit from immigrants (legal and illegal) to society. Mostly in GDP, but also wages in aggregate.

Another issue: A lot of illegal immigrants are doing side jobs, off the books. Construction work, for example. What do they do with the waste material and debris that they pull out of the house when they do a remod? They don't bring it to the dump or landfill, because the city charges a fee for that. So they drive it to a side street somewhere at night and dump it there, where it sits for many moons until the city gets around to collecting it.

It could go no other way.

I'm confused, this only happens because of illegal immigration? If the company were hiring citizens or legal immigrants, they would also pay to have the waste disposed of properly? How does that follow?